World Reports

Halliburton, Iran, and Nukes

Cheney’s company is secretly doing business with key member of Iran’s nuclear team.

Scandal-plagued
Halliburton, the oil services company once headed by Vice President
Dick Cheney, has been working secretly with one of Iran’s top nuclear
scientists on natural gas related projects and, allegedly, selling the
scientists’ oil company key components for a nuclear reactor, according
to Halliburton sources with intimate knowledge of both companies’
business dealings.

A recent National Security Council report said
Iran was a decade away from acquiring a nuclear bomb. That time frame
might have been significantly longer if Halliburton, which just
reported a 284-percent increase in its fourth quarter profits due to
its Iraq reconstruction contracts, were not actively providing the
Iranian government with the financial means to build a nuclear weapon.

Now
comes word that Halliburton, with its long history of flouting US law
by conducting business with countries alleged to have ties to
terrorism, has been working with Cyrus Nasseri, the vice chairman of
Oriental Oil Kish – one of Iran’s largest private oil companies – on
oil development projects in Tehran. Nasseri is also a key member of
Iran’s nuclear development team.

Nasseri was interrogated by
Iranian authorities in late July for allegedly providing Halliburton
with Iran’s nuclear secrets, and accepting as much as $1 million in
bribes from Halliburton, according to Iranian government officials.

It’s
unclear whether Halliburton was actually privy to Iran’s nuclear
activities. A company spokesperson did not return numerous calls for
comment.

Oriental Oil Kish’s dealings with Halliburton became
public knowledge in January when the company announced that it had
subcontracted parts of the South Pars natural gas drilling project to
Halliburton Products and Services, a Halliburton subsidiary registered
in the Cayman Islands.

Following the announcement, Halliburton
announced the South Pars gas field project in Tehran would be its last
project in Iran. TheBBC reported that Halliburton, which took in $30–$40 million from its Iranian
operations in 2003, "was winding down its work due to a poor business
environment."

The US Senate approved legislation July 26 that would penalize companies that set up offshore subsidiaries
as a way to legally conduct business in Libya, Iran, and Syria, and
avoid US sanctions under International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) (.pdf ~15K). The amendment, sponsored by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is part of the Senate Defense Authorization bill.

"The
bottom line is that if a US company is evading sanctions to do business
with one of these countries, they are helping to prop up countries that
support terrorism – most often aimed against America," Collins said.

Not
surprisingly, a letter drafted by trade groups representing corporate
executives vehemently objected to the amendment, saying it would lead
to further hatred and perhaps incite terrorist attacks on the US and
"greatly strain relations with the United States’ primary trading
partners."

"Extraterritorial measures irritate relations with the
very nations the US must secure cooperation from to promote
multilateral strategies to fight terrorism and to address other areas
of mutual concern," said a letter signed by the Coalition for
Employment through Exports, Emergency Coalition for American Trade,
National Foreign Trade Council, USA Engage, US Council on International
Business and the US Chamber of Commerce. "Foreign governments view US
efforts to dictate their foreign and commercial policy as violations of
sovereignty, often leading them to adopt retaliatory measures more at
odds with US goals."

Still, Collins’ amendment has some holes. As Washington Times columnist Frank Gaffney pointed out in a July 25 story, "The Collins
amendment would seek to penalize individuals or entities who evade
IEEPA sanctions – if they are subject to the jurisdiction of the United
States."

Going a step further, Dow Jones Newswires reported that the US Securities and Exchange Commission sent letters in June to
energy corporations demanding that the companies disclose in their
security filings any business dealings with terrorist-supporting
nations.

"The letters have been sent by the SEC’s Office of
Global Security Risk, a special division that monitors companies with
operations in Iran and other countries under US sanctions, which were
created by the US Congress in 2004," Dow Jones reported.

Investors
have become increasingly concerned that they may be unwillingly
supporting terrorist activity. In the case of Halliburton, the New York
City Comptroller’s Office threatened in March 2003 to pull its $23
million investment in the company if Halliburton continued to conduct
business with Iran.

The SEC letters are aimed at forcing
corporations to disclose their profits from business dealings with
rogue nations. Oil companies such as Devon Energy Corp.,
ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil, and Occidental Petroleum that currently
conduct business with countries that sponsor terrorism, have not
disclosed the profits received from terrorist countries in their most
recent quarterly reports because the companies don’t consider the
earnings "material."

Devon Energy was, until recently, conducting
business in Syria. The company just sold its stake in an oil field
there. ConocoPhillips has a service contract with the Syrian Petroleum
Co. that expires December 31.

Jason Leopold is the author of the explosive memoir, News Junkie, to be released in the spring of 2006 by Process/Feral House Books. Visit Leopold’s Web site at www.jasonleopold.com for updates.